Monday, February 16, 2015

Why do we need unions?
Because they are essential. Unions are the only large-scale movement
left that serve as a countervailing balance against the power of the employing
class, acting in the economic interest of working people. But the decline of unions over the past few
decades has left the rich with essentially no powerful opposition. You may take issue with a particular union’s
position on an issue, but remember they are the only real organized check on
the power of the business community in this country. Employers did not all of a
sudden give workers two days off each week, which we now call weekends, or paid
vacations and sick leave, or rights at the workplace, or pensions, or overtime
pay. Virtually all the benefits we have
at work, whether in the public or private sector, are because unions fought
hard and long against big business who did everything they could to prevent
giving us these rights.

Much has been made about the shrinking “middle class” in the
United States where the wealthiest 160,000 families own as much as the poorest 145
million families. Income inequality is
the gap in how much individuals earn from the work they do and the investments
they make. Wealth inequality measures the difference in how much money and
other assets individuals have accumulated. One of the contributing causes of
wealth inequality is the labor movement’s diminished economic and political
clout, as seen in the movement by states to enact right-to-work laws.

Thanks to collective bargaining, union members have higher
wages and better benefits. In addition,
union membership actually raises living and working standards for all working
men and women, union and non-union. When union membership rates are high, so is
the share of income that goes to the middle class. When those rates fall,
income inequality grows and the middle class shrinks.

Labor membership is shrinking. According to the Bureau of Labor Standards,
in 2014 the percentage of wage and salary workers who were members of a union
was 11.1 percent, down from 20.1 percent in 1983. Consider that union
membership peaked in 1954 at 28.3 percent. And union popularity is down. Last
year, a Gallup poll found only a small majority, 53 percent, approve of labor
unions, down from 75 percent in the 1950s. Yet 71 percent of those polled
support right-to-work laws.

Right-to-work, or as some have called such laws, a right to
work for less laws, are being enacted by more and more states. The 1947
Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, permitted a state
to pass laws that prohibit unions from requiring a worker to pay dues, even
when the worker is covered by a union-negotiated collective bargaining
agreement. Thus, workers in
right-to-work states have less incentive to join and pay dues to a union. As a
result, unions have less clout vis-à-vis corporations. Twenty-four states have
right-to-work laws.

One study found “worker friendly [non-right-to-work] states
are significantly healthier, are more productive, have less poverty, and with
citizens who enjoy longer life spans. In four of the seven measures (GDP per
capita, poverty, insurance and life expectancy rates) so-called ‘right-to-work’
states come out significantly (and statistically) worse.” The study concludes
saying “instead of pursuing laws that actually lower the standard of living in
their states, policy makers should look for ways to elevate everyone’s standard
of living. Enacting RTW laws is not only misguided, but in fact
counterproductive to achieving such ends.”